I can’t believe I’d never heard of this book before, “Giants in the Earth“. It was written in 1927 by Ole Edvard Rölvaag, a Norwegian immigrant and a professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. The book is a fictionalized account of original homesteaders on the South Dakota prairie, and goes into quite a […]

On this date (January 13) in 1843, Dale’s great-great-grandfather Peter Joseph Rademacher was born in Olpe, Germany. Known to friends and family as Joseph, he emigrated to the United States with his wife and children in 1878 and settled in Crete, Nebraska, where Joseph’s younger brother Frank had already established successful businesses. Joseph and his […]

Dale borrowed a photo collection from Wayne Nelson. The photos belonged to Wayne’s parents, August and Freda Nelson. The Nelsons used to live on Road 13, just north of the St. Vrain River – the old house that Dale grew up in. These photos were taken on a fall afternoon at the corner of present-day Weld County […]